Léa Drouet finds a spot in Kanal that she transforms into an area for play and experimentation for her six performers. Like a social laboratory, the piece tests the process involved in composing and disbanding groups. Infinite (re)arrangements of bodies and stage elements define new social rules like alternatives to the sole principles of inclusion and exclusion.

Claire Croizé engages with two of her favourite sources of inspiration: Bach and Rilke. She places both masters in the hands of Matteo Fargion, the British composer and multi-instrumentalist. They have not created slavish interpretations of Bach and Rilke, but rather opted for a playful, somewhat unruly tribute.

How can we say something about the future through the lens of the past? Michiel Vandevelde examines the recent history of western modern and contemporary dance, from Isadora Duncan to Anna Halprin. In five speculative acts about the past from the future, the present is inevitably reflected upon. This way, choreography becomes a form of science-fiction.

deufert&plischke are coming to Brussels for three weeks to collect ‘letters to dance’. To end the project with a bang, they are inviting you to a veritable Bal Populaire. The collection of favourite dance moves is the basis for a great party with live music. While everybody dances, you will hear and see a selection of the best ‘Letters to Dance’.

Dance and choreography leaves traces on your body, and they are often physical and concrete: growing muscles or the trauma of injuries. But the repetition and memory of movements also leave traces. The choreographies of the past continue to dwell in the dancer’s body. In the solo Body of Work, Daniel Linehan explores these traces in his own body.

In a choreography that transmits itself only by means of Stine Sampers’ photos, Vera Tussing and Esse Vanderbruggen re-situate their work in the urban landscape of Brussels, and then upload it to Instagram. On Dance Day, they invite you to Kaaitheater for a discussion on the meeting of their practices, and a physical sharing of the digital material.

Behalf is a danced dialogue between the Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun and the Taiwanese dancer Chen Wu-kang. This creation began as a series of conversations about their cultural backgrounds and the patriarchal social structures in both Thailand and Taiwan. A series of dance solos results in a mutual dialogue, which then moves on to involve a local musician and the audience.

Take a journey through time in one evening. Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg will take you on a journey through three of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s early works, which are each the choreographic response to historic compositions.

body as oracle, a trance, a rhythmic interface, an atmosphere, a landscape with the texture of my current mental state. a dance informed by everything and everyone i have ever encountered, seen, heard, felt, been beside that has become part of me, as i try to identify my own voice. and then see if i can stand it. nothing ever really goes away.

In this tribute to Ian White (1971-2013), Jimmy Robert investigates the worlds of disco and death. Expect a critical meditation on the legacy of the 1980s with a specific focus on AIDS, activism, gender and race.

Unfortunately, we have to cancel all shows due to the refusal of visas for the Congolese actors/dancers.

What is theatre? What do emotions and history signify on the stage? Faustin Linyekula shows his personal perspective on the history of dance and theatre in Africa. To what extent does the past define the present and even the future? Accompanied by music by Ray Lema, he challenges the basic techniques of “real theatre”.

The artistic paths of Marc Vanrunxt and Jan Martens have crossed several times, and they are now coalescing in a solo for Jan. Vanrunxt was there in the early eighties, at the cradle of the innovative dance wave in Flanders. A few generations later, Jan Martens is adding great verve to the succession and continuation of this wave. In lostmovements, they explore lost and forgotten movements.

Which movements or fragments of movements does a dancer remember after years of training and performance experience? In the first part of this solo for dancer Bahar Temiz, Vanrunxt explores the power and the possible significance of movement through memory. In the second part, Bahar fights a decelerated ‘disco-drone’: a scene in one flash of light that does not stop.

A fluctuating constellation of bodies heaves incessantly. Be swept away by Figure a Sea: a sea of possibilities and a meditation about looking at music, at volatility, at synchronous and unexpected moments. The choreography for 21 dancers is both technically immaculate and distinctly minimalist. Dance icon Deborah Hay challenges the intelligence, beauty, and humour of the Cullberg dancers. The result is 60 minutes of sublime purity, beauty, and physicality.

French choreographer and philosopher Noé Soulier is convinced that watching dance is just as creative as dancing itself. In this latest creation, he presents six dancers and two percussionists. The drum sounds add commas and full stops, punctuating or pausing a series of movements, or initiate new actions. Soulier explores the intersection of extremely precise dance writing and pure improvisation!

Sorrow Swag is the first part – in blue – of Ligia Lewis’ triptych that deals with race and representation. She meticulously creates a hybrid body that is in constant flux. Towards the end, the body transforms into nothing more than a mouth and an unrelenting scream. Earlier this year, Lewis made a big impression at WoWmen!18 with minor matter, the second, red instalment of this series.

As the world stands on the verge of collapse, a man and a woman exchange a razor-sharp dialogue based on a caustic text by Heiner Müller. Frank Vercruyssen from tg STAN and Cynthia Loemij from Rosas share the stage and explore the essence of the relationship between words and movement. Again at Kaaitheater after 20 years!

Five performers travel through the history of dance – and possibly into its future. Is it possible, today, to still believe in eternal values and universality? Things are built up only to fall down again, in much the same way that we long to constantly rediscover ourselves. In Built to Last (2012), Meg Stuart worked for the first time with existing classical music.

The vocal ensemble HYOID and artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater Benjamin Vandewalle are adapting Indianerlieder (1972) by Karlheinz Stockhausen, an iconic but rarely performed work. They are creating a gesamtkunstwerk that aims to reveal the vitality and timelessness of Stockhausen’s music. They are abandoning the original scenography in order to place the audience at the very centre of the three-dimensional ritual.

How does dance think through Eleanor Bauer and how does Eleanor Bauer think through dance? In this solo, the American choreographer and performer Eleanor Bauer embraces the particularity of dance-thought as synthetic, complex, change-oriented, fantastical, and multi-faceted. She works with the frictions, collisions, translations, love affairs and gaps between dance and language.

During her 1980 stay in New York, in which she first rehearsed her celebrated Violin Phase to the music of Steve Reich, the only other recording playing in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s studio was the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach. After more than 35 years, she is pursuing her work with this music, joined by sixteen dancers from various Rosas generations and accompanied live by the Baroque ensemble B’Rock.

Unfortunately, we have to cancel both shows due to health issues of one of the dancers.

In the American Midwest in the 1880s, white people hid illegal alcohol in their boots when they traded with Native Americans – an effective strategy to neutralize rebellious Native Americans through drunkenness. ‘Bootlegging’ was born. Now we are presenting Bootlegged: an encounter between Boyzie Cekwana and Danya Hammoud: two bodies, two stories, and two histories.

August 2016, a spring fair somewhere in Kinshasa. The young choreographer Pepe Elmas Naswa is watching an impressive snake dance, performed by a group of street kids and gang members. Afterwards, he convinces the kids to teach a group of contemporary dancers the snake dance during a workshop. This was when Dans la peau de l’autre was born.

For Chesterfield, Alix Eynaudi and her team were inspired by the leather collection of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art. The dancers apply different leather manipulation techniques to bodies and wares, and develop a maze of signs. Chesterfield is a patchwork poem woven with threads of leather… and all composed to a sensual cadence.